There are a surprisingly large number of patients, most notably in the UK and USA, who have undergone major surgery of the digestive track and are reliant upon a colostomy or ileostomy pouch to collect unabsorbed or excreted waste material from the digestive tract. For such patients use of these pouches represents a very considerable hardship and invariably involves wearing the pouch for many hours on end and awkward fitment and removal at frequent intervals with the further problem that upon removal of the pouch it must then be disposed of.
Fitment and removal of an ostomy pouch is generally carried out within the confines of a water closet and the pouch then is either emptied of its contents into the water closet bowl with the pouch then being binned or sealed away for carriage to a remote waste disposal unit or the pouch is adapted to be flushed away, following emptying or complete with its contents.
A variety of different designs of ostomy bag exist that are adapted for flushing and which are, for example, either adapted to be softened in the cold water of the toilet bowl or dispersed in hot water such as arises in the sludge digester of a sewage treatment plant and as disclosed in, for example, GB 2 290 968.
For those designs that are adapted to disperse or biodegrade in the environment of a sludge digester this does not, of course, facilitate the flushing of the product or its transit through the soil pipe and sewage drains. Other product designs are adapted to disperse upon contact with cold water when the pH of that water is adjusted to a level at which the material of the pouch is cold water soluble. Examples of the latter include U.S. Pat. No. 5,417,677 and GB 2 195 919. Such prior art systems of flushing disposal of ostomy and incontinence pouches are, however, not necessarily swift methods of disposal or do not allow for complete dispersal prior to flushing or, furthermore, require the carrying of potentially dangerous acid or alkali by the patient/wearer.
It is a general objective of the present invention to provide an ostomy/incontinence pouch or bag that is rapidly dispersible for flushing down a water closet without necessitating carrying of acidic or alkaline substances to facilitate the dispersion.